Angola News Online (15) - 5/21/98

ANGOLA NEWS ONLINE/ANGOLA NEWS ONLINE/ANGOLA NEWS ONLINE

Edition #15 21 May 1998

Subscribe to Angola News
Online
A bi-monthly update of news from
Angola!

**********************************

In this edition:
Feature:
RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA: WHO ARE THE VICTIMS?
Stories:
1. TROOPS IN CONGO "GRADUAL WITHDRAWAL" SAYS
PRESIDENT
2. DOS SANTOS CONCERNED WITH REGIONAL POLITICAL STABILITY
3. NEW UN MILITARY COMMANDER
4. UNITA'S ARMY INTACT - DEFENCE MINISTER
5. SITUATION AT PRISONS DIFFICULT AND COMPLEX - GOVERNMENT
6. MILITARY TENSION ON THE RISE
7. NOT ENOUGH FUNDS FOR EXPO'98, SAYS CULTURE MINISTER
8. STATE BUDGET TO BE REVISED AFTER OIL PRICE FALL

Feature:

RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA: WHO ARE THE VICTIMS?

"Your country has been devastated and your cities
burnt to ground. While you look on, foreigners take
over your land". This passage - from today's English
version Bible - refers to the prophet Isaiah's call
for "righteousness and justice" in the ancient
Kingdom of Judah in the latter half of the eighth century
BC. Now, seemingly impelled by the social and economic
hardships of this time in which they live, thousands
of Angolan families have been joining religions they
would never have even imagined, let alone joined, before.
With this they become active and in some cases blind
agents of an unprecedented proliferation of religions
in Angola.

The culture ministry says that of the less that 10 religions
identified in the early 80s, the country has now more
than 270 different churches or sects with most of them
preaching illegally. Illegally or not, the fact is
that unlike the veteran Christian churches,Catholic
and Protestant, most of the emerging and imported options
add to their messianic doctrines claims that they can
promptly cure chronically ill people, bring the poor
to wealth and restore happiness to the disgraced.

The majority of the leaders of these sects are Brazilians,
Portuguese with some few Africans and it is AIDS, tuberculosis,
blindness and deafness that are some of the diseases
they can allegedly treat.The question is: does religion
necessarily have to be associated with poverty? Why
is it that these sects find it so easy to grab the
attention of the masses, and how do they put across
their message so successfully?

The responses to this question can be many. However,
the wise and particularly the intelligent manner in
which prophets' ideas are structured in the Bible could
provide the explanation. People hear with their own
ears and read with their own eyes messages written
thousands of years ago but which carry vivid and live
images of the very situations by which they are confronted
in their everyday lives.

Isaiah, in the same chapter where he talks of devastation
and destruction, also says: "(...) Your leaders
are rebels and friends of thieves, they are always
accepting gifts and bribes. They never defend orphans
in court or listen when widows present their case".
Words of this kind, especially if interpreted by a
talented priest, sound fresh and appealing to the Angolan
man or woman, boy or girl feeling they suffer racism
or any other form of discrimination and deprivation
in their own land.

Reflecting this, many local intellectuals are of the
opinion that while struggling to rid the country of
the troubles caused by wars imposed upon them, foreigners
take advantage of this situation to dictate the rules
of the game. "They come in convinced that we are
not capable of anything. And this happens in front
of a total indifference from our authorities,"
says frustrated Alberto Fontes, a former Angolan soldier
now an architect and father of four who is struggling
to find a job.

Indeed, foreigners, old or new comers, take advantage
of the weak legal system of the country to prosper
through both legal and illegal business, whilst the
locals have to more and more tighten their belts. They
take advantage too of the complex of inferiority raging
around the key government institutions to encourage
or promote systematically discriminatory policies against
the locals where it comes to job opportunities.

Angola is described as a multiracial country, yet it
is one of the few places in Africa, if not in the world,
where foreigners have better business and job opportunities
than the locals. Local businesspeople complain of their
expatriate colleagues enjoying more help from the government
when setting up a business. And in almost all state
companies, not to mention the private ones, expatriates
usually get higher wages as compared to their local
colleagues with the same qualifications. The government
in such cases offers many excuses,but these are rejected
by those affected as unjustifiable and unacceptable.

An example of this is the case of university lecturers
who had long complained of earning less than their
expatriate colleagues, going as far as to declare a
strike on May 7. According to the strikers, expatriates
at the country's only university, Agostinho Neto University
in Luanda, earn monthly between 3,500-6,500 US dollars
whereas their Angolan workmates get US$150-650. This
is just one of many cases of terrible aberrations which
many immigrants take good advantage of to look down
upon the so called indigenous people who, in their
turn and to a large extent, blame their misfortunes
on the outsiders.

SOFOGOR is the name of a firm run by Portuguese immigrants
who have been forced to give up a TV advertising spot
widely rejected by the civil society as outrageous
and racist. In an attempt to market spirits, SOFOGOR
used the state-owned TPA television to display blacks
at a seaside downing full bottles of spirits straight
from the bottles. Just opposite them were white couples
in a garden enjoying scotch-on-the-rocks and gin and
tonics out of fine glasses.

The successful anti-SOFOGOR campaign was led by the
Luanda-based "Folha-8" independent bi-weekly,
which also bitterly accused TPA and the government
authorities of aligning themselves with "the
racists of SOFOGOR to insult the aboriginals".
This earned Folha-8 massive popular support as the
defender of national values while at the same time
other classes of the society labelled the paper as
anti-white and racist. The government authorities did
not react.

Also, many foreign firms have been repeatedly accused,
at least in the media, of developing different activities
in the country other than those that they declared
when entering Angola. Only now and then does the government
comes out and say that many foreign firms operating
in the country do not observe the legal requirements.

So what is the next step, some people might ask. Of
the main political leaders of the country, only the
ruling MPLA secretary-general Lopo do Nascimento has
so far had the courage to say what this might be...and
in public. In what was at that time feared could affect
political relations between Angola and Portugal, Mr
Do Nascimento last year criticized specifically the
Portuguese construction firms and banks which he accused
of "racist and discriminatory" behaviour
towards the Angolan workforce.

Expressing disappointment at what he called "unfair
and unbalanced economic cooperation with Portugal"
at a time when Angola was expecting an official visit
of prime minister AntÛnio Guterres, Lopo do Nascimento
maintained the need for defining a "real strategic
partnership" which, in his opinion, should result
from joint action from both Portuguese and Angolan
companies. He said that this should not be, as happens
now, in a partnership that only benefits the Portuguese
firms and citizens.

To many people, intellectuals or ordinary citizens,
it is now clearer than ever that complexion colour
has become a key requisite to success or promotion
everywhere, and this is mainly because of the complex
of inferiority cultivated and spread downwards in different
spheres of life. Critics say, for instance, that it
is hard to understand the fact that, coincidentally,
the three key economic posts in the government - the
ministries of finance and planning, and the central
bank - are all held by whites who are believed to hold
dual-nationality, something allowed by the Angolan
constitution.

And, despite a considerable race hybridization resulting
from years of European colonization, not a single coloured
child can be found among the hundreds of street kids
overcrowding the physically degraded capital city,
Luanda. To anyone coming across a coloured man, woman,
boy or girl wearing an expression of hardship causes
surprise because people have been accustomed to the
fact that that miserable modus vivendis is only expected
to be among the underprivileged, and this has come
to be seen as a synonym for blacks, the local ones.

Amid such an environment of social discrimination, a
mutual repulsion of the majority of Angolans and some
groups of immigrants, is certainly unavoidable.

Shall this then be called racism or xenophobia?

STORIES:

1. TROOPS IN CONGO "GRADUAL WITHDRAWAL" SAYS
PRESIDENT

President JosÈ Eduardo dos Santos of Angola recently
announced in Luanda that his government has already
started a gradual withdrawal of troops from the neigbouring
Congo where the situation is now said to be calm.

Dos Santos said that a significant number of troops
has pulled out of Congo under a plan agreed between
the two countries which, he added, were now negotiating
terms for a programme on military training.

According to the president, it was difficult to estimate
the costs of keeping troops in Congo but he acknowledged
that this had attracted "significant expenditure".
Unofficial sources in Luanda say that the Angolan state
was spending about US$10 million a month to keep an
estimated 1,500 soldiers in Congo where they helped
current president Denis Sassou Nguesso topple the democratically-elected
Pascal Lissouba.

The United States had expressed its displeasure with
this when it declared months ago that it was suspending
unilaterally its military cooperation with the Angolan
government unless all Angolan troops in Congo were
called back home.

2.DOS SANTOS CONCERNED WITH REGIONAL POLITICAL STABILITY

Worried about securing a more effective peace and political
stability in the central and southern regions of Africa,
the Angolan head of state, JosÈ Eduardo dos
Santos recently invited to Luanda his colleagues Nelson
Mandela of South Africa, Sassou Nguesso of Congo and
Sam Nujoma of Namibia for discussions on "necessary
common strategies".

In relation to central Africa, Dos Santos said, there
was an urgent need for countries in the region to set
up a political regional body for the exchange of viewpoints
on how to cooperate towards peace and stability in
central Africa. When it came to southern Africa, Dos
Santos maintained that neigbouring countries should
stick to the UNSC resolutions on Angola to make Jonas
Savimbi's UNITA "assume their commitment".
The three visiting heads of state all promised more
efforts to help Angola achieve peace in what is commonly
accepted as crucial to economic development in Africa
in general and for the southern sub-region in particular.
Particularly, the visit of South Africa's Nelson Mandela
was viewed by observers as aiming essentially at settling
some misunderstandings that had emerged with repeated
reports of Angolan airspace violations by planes from
South Africa to supply UNITA guerrillas.

At the end of the visit, Dos Santos thanked Mandela
for what he called his "contribution to improving
friendship and cooperation," and accepted an invitation
to visit South Africa before the end of Mandela's presidential
mandate.

3. NEW UN MILITARY COMMANDER

Lt-General Obeng Seth Kofi of Ghana is the new military
commander with the UN observer mission to Angola (MONUA),
replacing Zimbabwe's Major-General Philip Sibanda who
returned home early this month.

Shortly before flying back home, General Sibanda expressed
the belief that despite the situation of some tension
prevailing in some regions of the country, a peaceful
solution in Angola could be found in a wise way by
the two Angolan leaders - President JosÈ Eduardo
dos Santos and the UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.

Sibanda said his mandate of more than two years with
MONUA witnessed the realization of 80 per cent of the
tasks agreed in the 1994 Lusaka peace agreement for
Angola and that because of this he was leaving Angola
with a feeling of fulfilled duty. 4.UNITA'S ARMY
INTACT - DEFENCE MINISTER

The Angolan defence minister, General Pedro Sebastiao,
has rejected UNITA's "total demilitarization"
as endorsed earlier by the United Nations and said
that all compact military units of the movement remain
intact.

General Sebasti"o says that UNITA's combative capacity
was still active, because during the quartering of
troops months ago, Jonas Savimbi's movement presented
to the UN thousands of men, women, and children "instead
of surrendering its compact military units".

The minister said this recently in Luanda at a gathering
of Angolan military attaches to discuss new functional
strategies prepared by the government of unity and
national reconciliation. Reacting to some criticism
of Angola's military intervention in the latest armed
conflicts in the ex-Zaire and in Congo-Brazzaville,
the minister explained that the move was based merely
on the intention to participate in the solution of
two conflicts which were endangering regional stability
through the support given from such governments to
UNITA. This had paved the way to implementing the peace
process in Angola, he said.

5. SITUATION AT PRISONS DIFFICULT AND COMPLEX - GOVERNMENT

Pressured by the Angolan parliament to give an explanation
on bad conditions reported at Luanda prisons visited
earlier by some MPs, the Angolan government recently
recognized that conditions at almost all Angolan prisons
were worrying.

According to the vice-minister for home affairs, Mr
Fernado da Piedade "Nando", the prisons in
use in the country were all constructed during the
colonial period and that government has done no rehabilitation
work in the post-independence period.

"The situation (..) is very difficult and complex,"
he said adding that in most of the country's 18 provinces
prisons were totally destroyed by war and that because
of this those operating have an excessive number of
inmates. A commission from parliament last month visited
the main prisons in Luanda and prepared a report in
which it claimed to have come across prisoners held
in what it described as "terrible, inhuman conditions".
The report said there were many cases of excessive
probational periods, huge shortages of food and of
medicine as well as a large number of seriously ill
prisoners held without any medical care.

In response, Mr Nando said that some efforts were being
made but, he added, the results from such efforts were
not as quick and evident as everyone desired.

6. MILITARY TENSION ON THE RISE

Military tension in Angola has escalated in the last
few weeks, especially in the central, southern and
northern regions of the country where armed UNITA men
are said to have captured a number of small villages.

Government authorities in the provinces of Benguela,
Huambo (centre), Huila (south) and Uige (north) have
accused UNITA of launching a military offensive to
drive away the newly installed state administrative
officials. Ambushes on vehicles of civilians, police
and United Nations observers, deliberate raids on many
locations and kidnapping of villagers as well as stealing
of cattle and the massive deployment of troops in new
areas are some of the actions most reported in these
provinces.

As a result of such actions, scores of people including
civilians and a government municipal administrator
have reportedly been killed. Government officials say
it is difficult to determine the overall death-toll.
However, according to unofficial sources in Benguela
province, in only the municipality of Ganda over 1,000
persons are believed to have been killed and an estimated
36,000 displaced from their homes in 15 days.

In most cases,the attacks were confirmed by the United
Nations Mission (MONUA), but they have said that MONUA
has not yet identified those responsible. For their
part, UNITA has always shrugged off reports of any
military action saying that all its force had been
"totally disarmed".

7. FUNDS FOR EXPO'98 NOT ENOUGH, SAYS CULTURE MINISTER

A few days ahead of the official opening of the world's
EXPO'98 fair in Lisbon, the Angolan culture minister,
Mrs Ana Maria de Oliveira announced that the US$2.3
million fund her government put aside for expenses
for the exhibition were not sufficient.

Mrs Ana de Oliveira told a Luanda news conference that
they were now asking sponsors for complementary funds
to ensure that the programme initially planned would
not be compromised.

8. STATE BUDGET TO BE REVISED AFTER OIL PRICE FALL

With a state budget deeply reliant on revenues from
oil sales, Angola is now busy seeking ways to revise
its budget plan for 1998 following the recent fall
in oil prices on the international market.

The initial document was based on incomes expected from
the sale of 700,000 barrels of oil per day at the price
of US$18 each barrel which has now come down to about
US$12. Officials with the finance ministry in Luanda
say that as a result of this, there is a hard currency
deficit of US$500 million, almost half the amount predicted
for foreign debt refunding.

With the possible revision of the state budget, domestic
expenditure is also to be "drastically reduced"
to make it compatible with incomes volume and in line
with the priorities previously defined by the government.
This has prompted fears, especially amongst the political
opposition. They have already summoned government to
explain to the parliament about the criteria to be
taken into account and to make sure that the social
programmes, as contrasted to the military ones, are
not those to be most affected by such reductions.